Pawn’s Gambit is the second book in the Immortal Techniques series written by Rob J Hayes. I did a mini-review on the first book “Never Die” which I liked a lot. In the post I explain why I thought it was a perfect Getaway book for potential fantasy readers.
Pawn’s Gambit differs from the first book enough to justify its existence. The first book followed a team of badasses trying to assassinate the emperor.
In this book we have a God named Natsuko recruiting a woman called Yuu to participate in a game the gods made. The God who wins gets to rule over all the others and is basically in charge of what gets done in the divine realm and on earth.
Yuu is a recurring character from the first book, however, this time she is the main character with a point of view whereas in the first book she was introduced fairly late. Yuu is a strategist and thus she doesn’t actually do a lot of fighting herself.
The story is more about how Yuu avoids fighting and still gets what she wants through cunning and planning. This is very different from the first book which was all-out action all the time. The action scenes in the book are great and well written, there are not as many as in the first one given the focus on planning and strategy.
The cast in this one is smaller with Yuu taking up the majority of the page time. I do like Yuu as a character and the scene where she is introduced is particularly good. However, I do feel like the book is very repetitive in Yuu´s struggles. She mentions her grandmother a lot and she expresses a lot of regret about events happening in the first book. I felt it was too much at times, and she kept talking about it, it grew tiresome towards the end.
Yuu works with one or two partners at a time with the God Natsuko disappearing from the story from time to time. This leaves Yuu with whoever she is partnering up with in a given situation. The supporting cast changes a lot and their chemistry is lacking at times.
In Never Die you had a real team in the first book with different personalities that all worked well together. This made it so the dialog and situations never got stale, the characters played off each other in a good way. Pawn’s Gambit suffers a bit in this regard. Some of the supporting cast are great! Like the king/emperor of thieves named Fang, but they don’t stick around long enough to leave a proper mark.
Overall I liked the first one more since the dynamic team and kickass action made for a better overall experience. While Yuu is a decent character she doesn’t have what it takes to carry a story like this.
A good second book that is worth recommending, but it falls short of the first one. I will say that the climax of this book is way better than the first. It was very creative and well handled.
I recommend this book to all who like:
- Eastern-inspired fantasy
- well-written fight scenes
- A strong female lead
- Twist and turns